Crysis: Actually a good game?

[GrahfsLament]

HoloDust said:

It was OK. Probably better than I remember it.

Crysis was actually spiritual successor to FarCry 1 and way closer to its design than actual Ubisoft FarCry 2 (still being best Ubi FarCry to date

I just played through FarCry 2 this year, and, yeah, wholeheartedly agree it is the best Ubisoft entry (and I also liked it better than FarCry). I had some of the most exhilarating emergent gameplay I think I've ever had in a game playing FarCry 2. 2 examples which I had to recount in texts to friends (had it not been on the PS3, I would have saved the videos).

1. I threw a grenade at two boats with people on the turrets. It blew up both boats, the occupants, and felled a couple trees...one of which crushed another enemy.
2. I was being pursued by 2 jeeps with turrets. I hopped out of my still moving buggy, which ran over the guy in front me, then crouched in the tall grass so that they lost sight of me. I then threw a grenade under one jeep, causing it to explode and kill it's two occupants while also flipping over in the air and crushing another enemy only to then have the fire from the wreckage light up the foliage in real-time so that it all burned away, surrounding and engulfing the last enemy.

Awesome.

curl-6 said:

Having finally played through the whole thing properly this year on Switch, I'm the side of it being a genuinely good game, just not a great one.

The suit powers are cool and make you feel like a badass, the interactivity and freedom are nice, but it does kinda lack that special spark that makes a game a real classic. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what that is, but I guess it just kinda feel like it didn't quite live up to the potential its concept promised in terms of creativity. Still decent fun though.

I also just played the first Crysis (original), along with Warhead, this year on PC. While they're not cutting edge anymore, I do think the graphics are still really good and, to my eye, mind-blowing for 2007. In terms of the gameplay, I thought it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the tactical freedom in approaching any given cluster of bad guys. I felt the suit was well implemented and a lot of fun to mess around with. It kind of felt like playing the original Deus Ex after already having your augments built up (in terms of powers, not depth or arenas). I will say that the game's final standing in my estimation probably benefited from being told for years that it was a glorified tech demo. I expected something more akin to FarCry (PC) which, to me, did feel largely like a tech demo...an enjoyable tech demo to be sure, but a tech demo all the same. Crysis had more gameplay, variety, and story than I expected based on the reputation that preceded it. I'm not saying that any of these were revolutionary (though, again, the suit was, while not new, very well implemented), but they were much more than I expected. Accordingly, I think I got more enjoyment out of them simply due to being pleasantly surprised.

Only two gameplay observations I can think of making at the moment are:

1. The silencer was, for me, largely pointless - enemies were always alerted whether I used it or not.
2. I miss the left/right leaning mechanic in FPSs (it was a joy to use them in both Crysis and F.E.A.R.).